Did Leeds Sign A Pact With The Devil

[taxexile]

Leeds pay devilishly heavy price for past sins

By Sue Mott , DAILY TELEGRAPH.

Last Updated: 1:35am BST

The fall of Leeds United has been so precipitate and catastrophic, like a runaway toboggan down the Cresta Run, it is tempting to believe in some kind of supernatural retribution. As though a Faustian pact was forged during the Don Revie era, now demanding repayment. 'Let us be the best, the most feared, the most ferocious team in England but come the 21st century, Oh Great One with the pitch fork, you can get your own back'. And here it is. The vengeance. The famous Yorkshire club, on the verge of administration, faces relegation into the third tier of English football for the first time in a once-proud history.

How did it come to this? It is almost bizarre that at a time when Premiership clubs, and even Southampton in the Championship, are causing a feeding frenzy among the piranhas of world finance, Leeds United are crushed and penniless. New brooms are sweeping through football countrywide, Elland Road can't even afford a new broom.

This is the club where Arsenal's Herbert Chapman learned his trade, where Revie invented organised brilliance, where Howard Wilkinson won the title parading no less a talent than Eric Cantona. Where players like Bremner, Giles, Charlton, Clarke, Hunter preyed on, rather than played, terrified opposition under the guiding hand of their Don. Elland Road was a huge and passionate fortress. Now, like the training ground, it is sold-off and leased back to the club. Leeds are living on sufferance.

Have devilish forces been at work? Did they begin to unleash their tide of misfortune even as the club reached the semi-final of the Champions' League against Valencia in 2001, just six years ago, persuading the then-chairman Peter Ridsdale to borrow heavily on the strength of prospective television and sponsorship revenue, except that neither ever transpired. Perhaps they did. The devil has a track record of temptation.

He, the old goat, may well have been in the area while Jonathan Woodgate, then a Leeds centre-half, was convicted of affray after a street assault on a student. Lee Bowyer, his colleague, was declared innocent.

There began a free-fall into chaos. David O'Leary was sacked as manager, replaced by Terry Venables who proceeded to take the club to within an ace of relegation by winning only 16 games out of 42.

Peter Reid kept them up, then took them down and Eddie Gray, the old boy, found himself presiding over ruins. All the players of any value were sold off, like pieces of artwork or still-operable gas cookers, when a house is repossessed. Meanwhile the ownership of the club was being passed about like a parcel of dubious value - which it was.

Ridsdale resigned and a professor of economics took up the cudgels, only to hand them on to an insolvency expert, who sold off most of the assets, both brick and human, to reduce the gargantuan debt. The club was not so much run as systematically ransacked. Where are they now? Well, Ridsdale, for one, is chairman of Cardiff and side-stepping, with breathtaking gall, all responsibility for the fall. In fact, he was seen proferring a glass of champagne to the former Leeds commercial director, Adam Pearson, now chairman of Hull City, when their teams played each other at the weekend. Shamelessness 1, Accountability 0.

And so to the last chapter of accidents. Poor Kevin Blackwell being booted out despite heaving the club to the play-off finals against Watford. They were a game away from the Premiership just one year ago and now the reign of the crosspatch and diminutive Dennis Wise has brought them lower than at any time in their history. The chairman, Ken Bates, who planted £10 million of his Chelsea windfall into the club having been spurned by Sheffield Wednesday, might or might not rue the appointment of such a novice and controversial manager. We would like to know. But he is not answering his phone, which is rare when there is an opinion to be expressed.

Bates has always been fond of Wise, but the little Chelsea captain has fought his demons. He was sentenced to three months' imprisonment, overturned on appeal, for assaulting a taxi driver in 1995.

He was accused of biting a Mallorcan player in the Cup-Winners' Cup in 1999. He missed 15 Chelsea games due to suspension in the 1998-99 season. None of these incidents disprove his fitness as a manager - witness one Roy Keane, once also excitable - but the furious outburst after the Crystal Palace match this season when he accused one of his players of being a 'mole' and passing on tactical trade secrets to the opposition, indicated unnecessary hysteria.

As Sir Alex Ferguson said of Wise: "He could start a fight in an empty house". So could Sir Alex, for that matter, but Manchester United aren't sliding into old Division Three. That is a difference.

Even the fans are revolting. Against each other and everything else. On Saturday the supporters that remained in their seats turned on the gormless exhibitionists who invaded the pitch, forcing the temporary abandonment of the match against Ipswich. It is a club imploding as doom approaches.

The devil's work is all but over, except you cannot help wondering whether human frailty has its part in the drama after all.

Thirty years ago Revie resigned in uproar as England manager, his reputation forever tarnished, to take up a £340,000 tax-free post as manger of the United Arab Emirates team. Only a few voices were raised in his defence, notably his old Leeds United players. John Giles was one of them. "But who isn't greedy?" he said. The sentiment is hugely apt.

There is nothing supernatural about the story of Leeds United.

Super greedy and sadly human, more like it. Leeds United have been devoured by ambition unfulfilled and continuous, ill-conceived human error to the point where they have traded Premiership life (average annual turnover £75 million) to League One (£5 million). It cannot make them terribly attractive to prospective buyers. Except that by entering administration at this stage of the season the automatically-triggered 10-point deduction may affect this season and not next. Quite a smart, if ethically-debatable, move.

What are the football authorities going to do about it? Having failed to deduct points from West Ham United despite absolutely solid grounds of precedent, there seems to be a moratorium on fitting punishments to big teams on hard times. Maybe Leeds, in their darkest hour, are going to have a slice of luck. Maybe they've done another deal with the devil.

As Sir Alex Ferguson said of Wise: "He could start a fight in an empty house". So could Sir Alex, for that matter, but Manchester United aren't sliding into old Division Three. That is a difference.

Even the fans are revolting. Against each other and everything else. On Saturday the supporters that remained in their seats turned on the gormless exhibitionists who invaded the pitch, forcing the temporary abandonment of the match against Ipswich. It is a club imploding as doom approaches.

The devil's work is all but over, except you cannot help wondering whether human frailty has its part in the drama after all.

[warriors]

Great post I am supprised that no one at this moment in time has made any comment.

Three questions

Have they now gone into Administration or will the go before the Derby game.

(2 ) Have they had any fines as yet re the pitch invasion last weekend?

(3) When will the 10 points deduction kick in

[bendix]

What an utter piece of drivel?

Why do they need to go into administration? There are dozens of reports but only one person suggesting they MIGHT, and that is Gerald Krasner, the ex-Chairman who is now banned from Elland Road by the existing board for financial indiscretions. You might think he has an axe to grind, and is doing just that.

The fact is the club is in a good financial situation. It is virtually debt free, save for around 10m owed to American investors. In the scheme of football and for a club of our size, that's like an annoying credit card bill.

And where does this football finance expert Sue Mott get her 5million quid turnover for League 1 from? Do the maths. Even if Leeds can manage gates of 22,000 a week (which i think is conservative) with average ticket prices of 25 quid (again, conservative and lower than this season) and with 23 home League games, that equates to turnover from League one attendances only of over 12million quid. Add cup games, away matches, two sponsorship deals about to be signed for shirts and shirt sponsors and merchandise etc, and the five million figure she quotes is just plain nonsense.

Now look at their costs. This season nearly 70% of their entire player wage bill was to players who NO LONGER played for the club - the likes of Robbie Fowler, Seth Johnston, Danny Mills etc. We have also been paying partial salaries for Oleary, Venables and Peter Reid. All of these payments cease on 30 June. Of existing players, noone earns more than 5000 a week, except Gary Kelly and his contract is up in June also. Our wage bill will be slashed and wages are by far the largest component of a club's costs.

In fact, our financial state is better now than at any time in the last 20 years. It's got so good that the club is finally in a position to buy back Elland Road. Whether it does so remains to be seen.

Administration? Administration, my arse.

To paraphrase Mark Twain: "The reports of Leed's death are somewhat premature."

[warriors]

I hope your arse is NOT to soar.

As you see they did go into ADMINISTRATION

[EastSaxCol]

When will the 10 points deduction kick in

With effect from today. That's why they're relegated. Although they was without a paddle anyway.

Although Bates has bought the Club again this ain't without it's problems. The administrators have to take in offers from others (maybe up to seven others interested). As Bates made his offer minutes after they went into administration, this means that others weren't given a fair shout to take over Leeds. So it looks like if someone turns up on Tuesday (Bank Holiday) then legally they have to accept a higher offer.

The losers in all this are 'little people' of course, who have money owed. Programme printers, right down to the St.Johns Ambulance. They'll just have to go away and beg I suppose.

Money is all but ruining - o has ruined - our game it seems.

[Sunderland]

What an utter piece of drivel?

Why do they need to go into administration? There are dozens of reports but only one person suggesting they MIGHT, and that is Gerald Krasner, the ex-Chairman who is now banned from Elland Road by the existing board for financial indiscretions. You might think he has an axe to grind, and is doing just that.

The fact is the club is in a good financial situation. It is virtually debt free, save for around 10m owed to American investors. In the scheme of football and for a club of our size, that's like an annoying credit card bill.

And where does this football finance expert Sue Mott get her 5million quid turnover for League 1 from? Do the maths. Even if Leeds can manage gates of 22,000 a week (which i think is conservative) with average ticket prices of 25 quid (again, conservative and lower than this season) and with 23 home League games, that equates to turnover from League one attendances only of over 12million quid. Add cup games, away matches, two sponsorship deals about to be signed for shirts and shirt sponsors and merchandise etc, and the five million figure she quotes is just plain nonsense.

Now look at their costs. This season nearly 70% of their entire player wage bill was to players who NO LONGER played for the club - the likes of Robbie Fowler, Seth Johnston, Danny Mills etc. We have also been paying partial salaries for Oleary, Venables and Peter Reid. All of these payments cease on 30 June. Of existing players, noone earns more than 5000 a week, except Gary Kelly and his contract is up in June also. Our wage bill will be slashed and wages are by far the largest component of a club's costs.

In fact, our financial state is better now than at any time in the last 20 years. It's got so good that the club is finally in a position to buy back Elland Road. Whether it does so remains to be seen.

Administration? Administration, my arse.

To paraphrase Mark Twain: "The reports of Leed's death are somewhat premature."

When was the above article written? 1997?

[taxexile]

As you see they did go into ADMINISTRATION

the right move at the right time i would think.

[chuchok]

What an utter piece of drivel?

Administration? Administration, my arse.

To paraphrase Mark Twain: "The reports of Leed's death are somewhat premature."

Say again.....

[Prakanong]

What an utter piece of drivel?

Administration? Administration, my arse.

To paraphrase Mark Twain: "The reports of Leed's death are somewhat premature."

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/index.php?ac...mp;qpid=1285716

Quote Post

Say again.....

LOL - sometimes its best to bites ones tongue.

Ken Bates has sold the company with debt to another one - I hope the debt does not die with the old one or will the fraudster get away with it?

[taxexile]

bates was a big shareholder in the now defunct "old leeds united" , and , along with other creditors , has taken a substantial haircut as a result of the insolvency.

some background to leeds fall from grace.

The demise of Leeds United

Report: The demise of Leeds United

By Julie Tunney

BBC Sport looks back on the factors that have contributed to the downfall of Leeds, who have entered the third tier of English football for the first time in their history.

HIERARCHY

The failure to qualify for the Champions League during the 2000-2001 and 2001-2002 seasons led to dire financial consequences for Leeds.

In March 2002, the club announced pre-tax losses of £13.8m for the final six months of the previous year, with the failed £100m gamble on players in a bid for European success beginning to make the accountants nervous.

Chairman Peter Ridsdale sanctioned the spending spree by manager David O'Leary but, despite initially insisting he would ride out the increasing storm at the club, he resigned his role in March 2003.

Professor John McKenzie replaced Ridsdale at the helm but in October 2003, Leeds posted pre-tax losses of £49.5m for the year ending 30 June 2003, which was a record annual loss for a British football club.

Leeds averted the threat of going into administration by signing an agreement with the creditors before Professor McKenzie, who had put a price tag of £60m on the club, resigned as chairman and then as a director.

A locally-based consortium led by new Leeds chairman Gerald Krasner sealed a £30m takeover in March 2004 but by November of the same year Elland Road had been sold on a sale-and-lease-back arrangement after a buy-out led by Sebastien Sainsbury failed.

Former Chelsea supremo Ken Bates then stepped into the breach by buying a 50 per cent stake in the club in January 2005.

MANAGEMENT

Little did O'Leary know when the club failed to qualify for the Champions League in 2001 and 2002 on the back of his £100m outlay for players that the loss of television rights and sponsorship benefits they could have earned would have such a catastrophic effect.

After nearly four years in charge he was sacked in June 2002.

Former England boss Terry Venables became Leeds manager in July 2002 but by the end of the year the fans were calling for him to go because of poor Premiership form and a Uefa Cup exit at the hands of Malaga.

Venables himself hinted that he may have to consider his future if more players were sold so it was no surprise when he left Leeds in March 2003 and former Sunderland boss Peter Reid took over.

However, with Leeds bottom of the Premiership in November 2003, there was an inevitable parting of the ways after a 22-match reign. It was left to caretaker boss Eddie Gray to oversee the descent into what was then Division One in 2004 - after 14 years in the top echelon of the English game.

He was then replaced by Kevin Blackwell in what was seen by some as a surprise appointment, with many other bigger names being linked to the post.

However, with no money, few experienced players and seemingly little hope he managed to instil a team spirit and a work ethic into the side that - after a mid-table position in 2004-2005 - propelled them to fifth place in the Championship last season.

After years of uncertainty the fans were given renewed hope that this was to be the springboard for success but Watford ended all that with victory over Leeds in the play-off final.

Despite that setback, Leeds were still touted as one of the candidates for promotion this season but Blackwell was sent packing in September 2006 after a poor start to the campaign.

A month later, Dennis Wise left Swindon for Elland Road and even though he turned the relegation battle from a seemingly doomed scenario into a down to the wire one, he was unable to stop the rot and next year supporters will be having to learn the routes to new destinations in League One.

PLAYERS

The financial plight at Elland Road led to the cut-price sale of some of the club's assets - ie the players.

The exit of defender Rio Ferdinand to fierce rivals Manchester United left fans angry and disappointed but at least when he was sold in July 2002, Leeds were left with the £30m in the coffers they had craved.

However, when, in 2003, BBC Sport analysed other departures the findings were very different. Striker Robbie Keane joined Tottenham in an eventual £12m deal in August 2002 - only 15 months after arriving from Inter Milan for £12m, while the £10m-rated duo of Lee Bowyer and Olivier Dacourt joined West Ham and Roma for £100,000 and £3.5m respectively.

Manchester City bought forward Robbie Fowler, who Leeds signed from Liverpool for £11m in 2001, for £6m in January 2003.

Meanwhile, £15m-rated Jonathan Woodgate and Harry Kewell, who had progressed from the trainee ranks at Leeds, sealed respective £9m and £5m moves to Newcastle and Liverpool in the January and December of 2003.

How the Premiership top seven in 2000-2001 have fared since

The big-name departures did not stop there. In July 2004, striker Mark Viduka joined Middlesbrough for £4.5m, while in May of the same year Tottenham acquired goalkeeper Paul Robinson for £1.5m and Manchester United snapped up striker Alan Smith in a deal worth £7m.

WHAT NEXT?

The financial implications of relegation have led Leeds to urge any would-be investors to prove they have the funds in place to help the club bounce back to the Championship

Chairman Ken Bates has given his backing to Dennis Wise but if the former Chelsea player remains as manager he faces a battle to keep his best players. Plus, if any exits reap monetary rewards how much of that will he be given to plow back into rebuilding the squad in a bid to clinch a quick promotion?

Leeds striker David Healy, who has already been linked to Rangers, has made a big impact on the world stage with Northern Ireland this season but will he and his team-mates remain content at a club with a big history yet facing life in a division that generates smaller column inches in the media?

The club may also have to contend with a fight to keep the fans coming through the turnstiles.

None would have expected a return to the glory days under manager Don Revie of the 1960s and 1970s but after last season's near miss on the promotion path the supporters must be stunned by the drop down a division.

Manchester City were relegated to the same division in 1999 - then called Division Two - and bounced back a year later with a play-off final victory that eventually led to a return to the Premiership so, if Leeds can climb off the management merry-go-round and look to long-term stability at the helm, all may not be lost.

Former Leeds manager O'Leary recently told BBC Five Live Sport that he hoped the club would stave off relegation because "I never wanted to leave, the fans were fantastic to me and I had great times there".

If Leeds had gone on to reach that Champions League final six years ago or been involved in the competition the following season the fate of the club could have been so different.

RELATED BBC LINKS:

[EastSaxCol]

From today's Telegraph:

Former West Ham owner Brown plans secret bid for Leeds

By David Bond

The former West Ham chairman, Terry Brown, has been plotting a secret takeover bid for Leeds United which could still succeed despite Ken Bates yesterday placing the club in administration and agreeing a deal to buy it back immediately.

Just six months after selling West Ham to an Icelandic consortium fronted by Eggert Magnusson in a £108 million deal, The Daily Telegraph has learned that Brown held discussions about rescuing Leeds with Bates in Monaco last month.

Despite being blamed by Magnusson for landing West Ham with a £5.5 million Premier League fine over the Carlos Tevez and Javier Mascherano scandal, Brown is keen to make a return to football.

He wants to use some of the £33.4 million profit he made from the sale of his shares in West Ham to buy a new club, even though he is a lifelong supporter of the East End side. It is understood his plan for Leeds involves installing his former managing director at Upton Park, Paul Aldridge, as the new chief executive at Elland Road.

Aldridge was last week accused by a Premier League commission of failing to disclose contracts which proved that Tevez and Mascherano were not owned by West Ham but by offshore companies. He has threatened to sue the League over the ruling.

Yesterday Bates left Leeds' long-suffering fans and the rest of football scratching their heads as he made full use of British insolvency law to effectively write off £35 million of debts at the same time as retaining control of the club.

At 3.15 yesterday afternoon KPMG were appointed administrators to the club. A statement released by the accountants revealed how a winding-up order from HM Revenue and Customs over £5 million had left Bates facing liquidation unless he paid up by June 25.

With Leeds all but relegated to League One going into tomorrow's final day of the Championship season against Derby, the club knew they would face an automatic 10-point penalty if they went into administration after the weekend. By going into administration now the 10-point penalty applies to this season, confirming they have been relegated.

But at the same time Bates won the backing of the administrators to buy the company back for an undisclosed fee.

The process is legal and allows directors to run a company into the ground, only to buy the assets back from an administrator, leaving the creditors high and dry. In this case it is the taxman who suffers the biggest blow.

The deal must still be approved by creditors at a meeting before the end of May, which means other bidders, including Brown, still have a chance to buy the club if they can prove the deal is better value for the creditors.

Oh dear. Perhaps next they'll have Roeder as manager too

[bendix]

Well, bugger me.

I couldnt have got it any more wrong, could I?

mea culpa.

[Prakanong]

Well, bugger me.

I couldnt have got it any more wrong, could I?

mea culpa.

Well all you did was probably miss Ken Bates out of your equation and analysis!

He is a rogue

[taxexile]

from the daily telegraph.

Leeds big on egos, small on accountability

By Jim White

Last Updated: 1:54am BST 05/05/2007

Now it is certain. Thanks to the 10-point deduction for going into administration, Leeds United have been relegated to the third tier of English football. The frail mathematical lifeline that kept them still theoretically connected to the Championship has been cut from beneath them by their own board. Not even a mathematical turnaround that would make Stephen Hawking scratch his head with bemusement can save them now.

So extraordinary has been the club's decline that all week the newspapers, radio and television have been attempting to analyse precisely how is it that an outfit recently supping from the top table have plunged so deeply that in August their fans will be required to don an aqualung to navigate their way round the new fixture list. But reading of, and listening to those involved in the Leeds story speak about their part in the fall, it is hard to understand quite how it ever happened. No one, apparently, did anything wrong.

Despite being at the helm of a club in financial meltdown, for instance, the current chairman, Ken Bates, declares himself entirely blameless. It is nothing to do with him, he insists. As far as he is concerned, the fault lies with everyone from the city council, through the previous administration to those journalists with the audacity to try to pick their way through the fisherman's nest of holding companies within which he prefers to locate his business interests. Equally, the manager in charge of a team who have gone from the play-offs to relegation in 12 months sees only positives in the experience.

"We can draw strength from this and improve as a group," says Dennis Wise, as if the plunge into League One were some pre-season team-bonding exercise involving the fording of a stream using only a ball of string, two paper clips and a milk carton.

Meanwhile Peter Ridsdale, the chairman who presided over the accumulation of debt so mountainous you would need the skills of Chris Bonington to assess its true scale, is telling anyone who will listen that the only mistake he made at Elland Road was to defer to his manager, David O'Leary.

Talking to John Humphrys on Radio 4's On The Ropes this week, Ridsdale appeared to be the living embodiment of Brian Clough's assertion that there is no creature on earth with a more inflated ego than a football club director. According to the Ridsdale version, everything good that happened at Leeds was due to his wise stewardship. Everything bad was the fault of the manager or the other directors.

"Privately I had my own view on that, but I was obliged to go with the majority of the board," he told Humphrys of their cack-handed decisions, from buying stock for the office aquarium to having four managers on the payroll at once.

Indeed, anyone who caught Ridsdale in full post-rationalising flow would have hesitated to join in the outbreak of gleeful sniggering that has greeted the once-great Yorkshire club's humiliation.

As if watching the football their team have played has not been punishment enough, the Elland Road faithful have been condemned to spending the past five years listening to the self-serving approaches of Messrs Ridsdale, O'Leary, Venables, Bates and Wise.

Instead of mocking surely, right now, there can be no one in the game more deserving of sympathy than Leeds' hard-pressed fans.

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